


traveling songs

by crookedverite



Category: Six of Crows Series - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: F/M, Post-Canon, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-20
Updated: 2017-09-02
Packaged: 2018-12-17 22:20:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 16,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11860794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crookedverite/pseuds/crookedverite
Summary: Inej returns to Ketterdam after an eighteen month voyage and brings new demons with her.





	1. Chapter 1

The quartermaster did not believe herself to be a spy. She did not even consider it spying—she was simply standing by the captain’s quarters, keeping guard while the crew slept. Captain Ghafa refused to enlist her own vanguard, insisting the men and women on the ship be treated fairly. It was unusual for a pirate captain to do so—on the sea, the captain’s words were final and they often chose them with the intention to protect themselves first. In the two years the quartermaster has sailed under her, Ghafa did not seem to carry the same selfishness with her. 

The quartermaster stood, hands flexing around the pistol behind her back as the sea hissed beneath the ship. They would reach land soon, presuming the Council of Tides allowed them to pass. She could feel the inhuman pull of the water even now, even at this distance: the artificial rush of the waves as they chased the city beyond the horizon. It would be eighteen months since they last sailed into her—the longest journey yet. The bloodiest. The quartermaster leaned against the heavy wooden door, monitoring the muffled screams that came from behind. 

No, she would not consider this spying. Ghafa often slept in the captain’s quarters rather than with her crew, and the quartermaster knew why. Ghafa may be the captain of their ship, but she was scarcely twenty. A child, five years younger than the quartermaster herself. Already one of the deadliest pirates sailing on the True Sea. Already the robber of countless lives. It was the motherly instincts in her, the quartermaster supposed, to stand outside that door and listen to the restless sounds in that cabin, waiting for any sign of legitimate danger that might reach Ghafa. 

But there never was any danger to the captain. There never will be, on the _Wraith_. There was just a captain, locked in a room in the dead of night, howling into her sheets as she slept. Waking. Falling asleep again and screaming at whatever horrors haunted her sleep that night. The quartermaster had seen them in flesh, watching from the deck of the _Wraith_ as Ghafa slit the throats of slave hunters, choking on their repentance as they bled. Every other day they came upon a new ship, a new cargo of chattel. Last week, the quartermaster had seen her sink knives into the backs and necks and hearts of seventeen slavers and barely pause for a breath. 

She watched Ghafa kneel at the last man to die and wait quietly for his last words. She watched her turn from the dead man and face the slaves huddled into each other on the lower deck, spattered with blood. She watched a young lad in chains, skin jeweled with ruby red blood, rise from the huddle, and stand before the captain. Watched him fall to his knees before her, hands clasped in prayer. _Take me, just me, not my sister, she’s only a babe, please…_

Pirates were not civil, they were not compassionate. They stole ships, then money, and then lives. _No prey, no pay_. The quartermaster knew the words and accepted them. The whole world did. But not Ghafa. She seemed determined to set enslaved lives free while ending the ones that stole them in the first place. The captain prayed at the helm before each battle, whispering names of Saints to her knives. Praying for her crew, for the slaves to be freed. Praying to names the quartermaster had never heard of, short and sharp and heavy with dangerous history. A praying pirate was a dangerous sign, but the danger that followed was never inflicted on the crew. The quartermaster’s eyes always caught on those knives. How can a pirate so sinister, a child so ruthless, still have gods? Still whisper their names? Captain Ghafa herself was a goddess on the sea, in the stories they heard at taverns. She was the mother of the horrors that haunted her sleep, that bade her farewell until they met again in the dark.

The sun broke over the horizon line, illuminating a dark strip of land due northeast. The quartermaster secured her pistol back into her belt. She raised a fist to the wooden door and knocked once, loudly. There was a hoarse gasp, almost inaudible among the slow sighing of the sea around them. Then silence.

“Land ho, Captain,” the quartermaster called. She looked up to the crow’s nest, waving at the pirate sitting there with her telescope. 

“Well?” She shouted.

“Aye, we’ll be upon her in three hours—maybe less.”

The quartermaster nodded and stomped her foot on the boards, where the amber sunlight had started to spill. “Land ho! She’s been spotted, Ketterdam awaits!” 

-

Inej had not written a letter this time. She allowed herself the truth that it was because she simply did not know when she would return. And it wasn’t like she was getting any replies anyway. How would news travel about her return now, then? Would there be runners lounging around the docks, as they always did? Would they spot the _Wraith_ and hurry to the Barrel, announce her arrival? Perhaps there would be no runners at all, deciding long ago that it would require too much time and too much effort to keep a lookout for someone who did not say when they would return. Or if they would return at all. 

The wind tugged at the braid hanging loosely down Inej’s back, so she lifted her tricorn hat and let the air embrace her. With it came the stench of piss and rot and mold—Ketterdam’s finest. She found herself drawing it in and sighed. She was breathing in the salt of the sea for so long, the smell of land had completely escaped her memory. It had been just one of many things about this place she had unconsciously nudged out of her head, day by day, leading them along a teetering rope and pushing them quietly, unknowingly, down. Simple truths. 

“Captain,” her quartermaster called from the forecastle to where she lazed by the quarterdeck. “We’re unloading them now. ‘Fore crowds start to gather.”

Inej glanced over to the bodies still huddling around the main deck. All broken of their chains, yet they pressed themselves against each other, worn eyes looking down or to the sea. No matter how many they rescued, Inej always felt a black pool of guilt forming in her chest at the sight of them, burning into her ribs. _You had done the same._ A fourteen-year-old Suli acrobat, squeezed between sweating bodies in the cargo hold of the slavers ship that stole her from Os Kervo. She remembered the scraping of her throat, the holes she burned through the metal chains with her eyes. She saw dozens of them now.

Inej let them roam free around the ship. Still they huddled, avoiding her gaze. She tried to reassure them, explain to them that she would find their families and return them home. She offered her hands to the children, hoping they could see traces of a fourteen-year-old girl in her eyes. They stared daggers at the floorboards and yanked their hands away. Inej was a pirate, after all. _The Wraith._ They had seen what she could do. 

She wished she could do more. She wished she could pluck the memories of the slave hunters right out of their heads and drown them in the sea. She wished it for them as she had wished it for herself so long ago. 

“Take them to the embassies. Aya and Miss Lotte will go with you.”

“You ain’t coming?”

“I’ll tend to supplies that need restocking. We’ll meet back here at noon tomorrow.” Inej dipped her head in farewell. She tucked her hat under her arm and yanked at the ship’s shrouds, slipping over, climbing down onto the main port. People were already beginning to trickle in even at the break of dawn. News would spread quicker than she would have preferred, but this was Ketterdam, after all. Word of mouth in this place traveled as fast as a bullet to the brain. 

Inej hurried to outrun the huddle trickling off her ship. She may have broken their chains but she was still a murderer in their eyes, and they probably didn’t want to be led down the harbor by a red-handed pirate. She wove her way through the Government District, tipping her hat lower down. _The sea bitch_ , as the Kerch had notoriously named her. Understandable. Slaves fueled Ketterdam’s metal heart, and she was melting it down. 

She stopped before the towering hand of Ghezen, squinting at its fingertips. They flickered down at her, welcoming her back. If she let her eyes linger, she could see flashes of a girl twirling along the pitched roofs, sneering at her as all Shadows do for the Saints. It ashamed her to admit it, but she had forgotten that the Kerch worshipped a god at all. It was a king that danced on the lips of newsmongers and informers. The Barrel bastard who had become a king. 

Years ago, he told her he would build empires just to burn them down. Just to build them anew. Would she see him walking around the Barrel with his cane in hand, then? Leaving a trail of ashes, burning buildings, smoky skies? Inej eyed the rooftops. A tap of a crow-headed cane? Or the flash of a black topcoat turning the corner? No, she was always ahead of him. Maybe he’s found himself a new Spider and they’ll be the one to find Inej standing before Ghezen. He must be here. Inej could not imagine a Ketterdam without him; she could not imagine him coming home to anything else.

She sucked in a shaking breath and brushed off her paranoia. She was doing it more often than she wanted to admit. She was about to turn away when she sensed someone behind her. Someone with smug footsteps meant to make a racket, footsteps that wanted to be heard. A smile snaked across her face and she turned. 

So, someone _had_ been lounging, waiting for news. A gangly-limbed man leaned against a lamppost across the street, darkened gold skin in the morning sun, hands resting on his beloved pistols. A playful grin on his face.

Inej ran, closing the distance between them in split seconds. She leapt off her feet and locked onto him. 

“Jesper,” she laughed. “Jesper Llewllyn Fahey. It’s good to see you.”

Jesper cackled and spun her in the street. “Saints, Inej, what took you so long? Is this—oh, do not tell me you wear this every day.” He set her down, his gunmetal eyes widening at her head. He plucked the hat off and set it on his own. “I want to know the name and address of the person who made you the most ridiculously dramatic hat in the world.” 

“It’s a captain’s tricornered hat—and it doesn’t fit _every_ head.” She tried to yank it back, giggling, but the sight of him wearing it made her heart soar. _Too long, too long_. 

Jesper kissed her forehead. “Wylan’s had a room made for you for weeks. Will you stay?”

She could feel the last three years dissolving into nothing the moment Jesper stepped into the street. They could almost be kids again, witty and careless and mocking-eyed. “I was just on my way.” 

-

Inej had once doubted that Wylan van Eck’s hair could get any curlier. Probably sworn it to the Saints in a murmur at the Crow’s Club on a mission years ago. Now she spotted him loitering on his front porch, a book in his lap and an unconquerable mess of copper ringlets hiding his eyes. Time had done its way with his hair, then. And his height, too. He was almost as long-limbed as Jesper now, and his legs tangled on the porch steps. The book confused Inej for a step until she saw the paintbrush in his other hand. 

“You should see his work,” Jesper’s lips curled into a smirk as they approached the mansion. “He’s got an eye for real beauty—I mean, I do make up most of his painting subjects so it makes sense.”

“It does,” Inej agreed. Wylan looked up at the sound of their voices and his eyes brightened when he saw her. She rushed to him. 

“Inej! Oh Inej…I _told_ Jes you would come.” He almost towered over her now, lifting her into an embrace, hands splattered with blues and yellows from the paint. “Eighteen months. Where did you go?”

“Os Kervo, mostly. We stopped in Shiftport for resupplies, but the slavers seem to stay near Ravka now,” she said. Simple truths. She clasped Wylan’s color-kissed hands in her own and met his eyes. “We were becalmed, our entire course shifted dozens of times. I’m sorry I couldn’t write sooner.”

Wylan gave her hands a squeeze. “There is nothing to be sorry for.”

Time had done its way with the mansion, too. The little that Inej remembered of Jan van Eck’s home had disappeared entirely. It was lighter. The sun shone through every open window, painting everything inside in a soft glow. Despite her best efforts, the black pool began to form in Inej’s chest again. Before her last departure she used to stay here countless times, back when her voyages lasted days or weeks. She had allowed herself to call it a second home whenever she left the sea. It was all during the first small pocket of months when she never drew her sword at a stranger, when she spent her days learning to sail and training instead of hunting. When she would return to Ketterdam every fortnight, running to the familiar walls of Wylan’s mansion and the Slat. 

She hadn’t returned from training this time. Inej had steered her ship headfirst towards fleets of West Ravkan slavers and wielded hordes of thieves and ex-slaves to fight alongside her. It had been eighteen months of hunting, murdering, unloading, returning and hunting again. She’d slit the throats of her own men and women when their wounds promised them a slower death. She’d seen slaves throw themselves overboard for mistaking her bloodlust at the slavers for the bloodlust of another pirate. Today she was returning with broken bodies and hands coated in blood. _Dirtyhands._ Inej flexed her fingers on a desk in one of Wylan’s reading rooms, seeing leather over the skin. She might have to find armor of her own now.

Soft, lilting notes floated through the doorway to the sitting room, where Wylan sat at a grand piano. Inej peeked through threshold and saw Jesper beside him, his fingers hovering over the keys. 

“This one is simple, Jes. Three notes in a pattern,” Wylan’s fingertips guided Jesper’s over the keys. “Like this.”

Jesper clicked his tongue. “Slender keys for slender fingers. Do they sell pianos in extra small?”

“It’s a _grand_ piano. This is the _grandest_ version of the instrument.”

Inej watched Jesper tangle his fingers in Wylan’s and bring them to his lips. She turned away, forgetting that they hadn’t noticed her standing there. She returned to the doorway with deliberately louder footsteps and tapped the wall. “I’m going for a walk.”

Jesper looked up, meeting her eyes. “You know he’s gotten word by now, Inej.”

She knew. 

-

She took to the roofs for this one. Watching the city open its eyes and breathe the midday air was never the same from these heights. Ghezen was on her mind now, and she heard Ketterdam humming prayers to the god as the Exchange filled with merchers, as the East Stave erupted with gambling fights and performers of the Komedie Brute. 

Inej slipped across Barrel rooftops. The way her feet still found the old pathways and hidden footholds without a moment’s hesitation pleased her. The sea was a different kind of climb; it was always shifting and reorienting her movements. She learned to follow the water and move as it moved, balancing her weight when the waves gathered against her. No two ascents were the same on the sea, no two maneuvers identical against the water. The wood and concrete almost seemed to push at her now, stubborn and permanent and rigid as they were. The familiarity of it—the creeping feeling that nothing had changed almost threw her off balance. _Almost_. After all, she had mastered the sea just as she had mastered the land. She was still the Wraith. The Suli girl with phantom feet. 

A heavy silence had fallen between her ship and the Slat over the past year. The air hung heavier now, impatient, demanding an answer for its desertion. She eyed the building like an intruder, a thief. His office was on the first floor; a practical choice for his leg now that he was leading the Dregs. But Inej’s eyes traced the outline of the attic window. There was a better chance that he would not even enter the room unless to wash his hands of the day and retreat to a quieter space to study. He may not even be in the Slat at all. 

But if Jesper had received word of her arrival while she was making her way through the Government District, then Kaz Brekker would have received word the minute she stepped down from the dock. He would be around. Inej was on the Slat’s roof, then she was scaling the wall to her window, and then she was inside. 

The heat from the sunlight had baked his room. She felt moisture gathering above her lips, the base of her neck. _Empty._ Wooden crates lay where they’d always lain as makeshift shelves and tables. A neatly made bed, an untouched wash basin. The only things in the room that would give away the identity of its owner were scattered over his desk: building plans, accounting files, identification forms. Inej brushed her fingers over the pages. 

She turned at the sound of metal tapping on wood. Even now, Kaz pretended like his days of approaching unnoticed were behind him.

“What business?”

Inej leaned against the desk. The words hung heavy and sharp in the air but she would not answer—not to that. 

Kaz didn’t miss a beat. “I thought the Council of Tides stopped letting ships onto the harbors before dawn,” he said casually, gloved hands resting on the crow’s head.

“Special delivery. Half a hundred ex-slaves arriving onto one harbor in the middle of the day is not a spectacle I can entertain.”

“Ah,” he nodded. She stepped toward him, tiptoeing across a minefield. His hair was longer now where he hadn’t trimmed it, she noticed. And a new crisp business tie and matching waistcoat. His steady gaze, coolly watching her move. Had time frozen her in place on the sea? Were there any traces of the young Suli spy there, on her face, on her hands? Was he searching for them now?

Kaz closed the distance, his dark eyes catching on hers. “Good to have you back, Wraith.” He offered her his arm in greeting and she clasped it. “Any wise Suli proverbs for your long-awaited return?”

“Pirates have their own sayings as well.”

“None meant for the ears of your Saints, though. Less poetic.”

“And more cursing,” she added. “Have I interrupted a heist?”

“City plans,” said Kaz idly. He hung his coat and hat and made his way to his seat. “Are you staying for long?”

“We need a few days to restock. A week, maybe less.”

“You’re welcome to stay at the Slat, as always.” A hint of a smile. “But I suspect Wylan’s beaten me to the offer.”

“He has,” she said. “I told him I’d be staying at the Geldrenner Hotel.” 

Kaz blinked. “Why the Geldrenner?”

“Pirate business. Better to settle it in a neutral place.”

“I can help you.” 

She laughed. “You can’t wash your hands of this city with the business of the sea, Kaz.” 

“I don’t intend to.” Rugged edges glinted in his eyes. “When new players join the game, I want to know where they’re standing. Lest I find them standing on the wrong side.”

“And those city plans will tell you which sides to stand on?”

“They can wait,” said Kaz, combing gloved fingers through his hair. Inej saw her own fingers there, sifting through the curling strands. Something in her heart was beginning to give away and she sent a silent prayer to the Saints to hold it together just a little longer.

“It’s being handled,” she promised. Simple truths. 

Kaz nodded and his expression changed, sharp angles giving away. A street performer preparing for his next line: “Tell me about the sea.”

The Saints weren’t listening to her prayers today, then. The floor pushed at her heels, demanding her to speak. On the _Wraith_ , she scaled ropes instead of rooftops, hanging on their knots to scan the horizon. They were not ropes made for an acrobat’s feet; they were thicker, knotted, frayed. She adapted and used her arms, so there her skin broke and bled. _Dirtyhands._ Ropes did not demand words from her. They stretched across her limbs, became part of her hands. In her sleep, they coiled around her like a net over prey. They formed nooses around her throat. Inej demanded justice from the sea, and the ropes, in turn, had demanded justice from her. _Tell me about the sea._ It was not a still thing, so Inej had changed with it. Conquered it and allowed it to conquer her. She could not wash herself of it by baring its secrets to a boy named Dirtyhands. 

So she told him stories—the better ones, the lighter ones. The ones she had saved for him in the beginning, pocketing them like gems. Giving them away for the right price like all thieves did. 

-

She had moved to his windowsill after a while, stretching out her legs and watching the city streets when she paused. Kaz couldn’t take his eyes off her. Her velvet hair hung over her shoulders and she fiddled with it as she spoke. New scars covered her hands, her neck. _Careful, Kaz._ He could see a faint white line lining her jaw in the sunlight. Faded exhaustion clung to her face when she met his gaze. Dark moons painted beneath her eyes. _What else, what else?_ He followed her movements like a crow seeking flesh. There would not be enough time for this, for however long she perched on that sill. 

Kaz Brekker had heard the rumors. A conqueror now crossed the True Sea, sailing with a new kind of justice. Some called her a savior— _Sankta Inej_. Most had named her a demon because of her inhuman body count. Informants told him that she had boarded sixty slave traders in the past year, and killed five times that amount of slavers. The deadliest pirate on the sea. A monster reborn in its dark waters. It was Specht who told him. An old associate of the former naval officer had passed the story to him, and he had passed it to Kaz. _They call her the sea bitch._ What followed was not Specht’s fault—he would have given the broken nose to anyone closer. 

The girl before him was Inej and she was not Inej. There was something more to her, something less. Something beaten out of her. His eyes tore at her, searching, but he could not unravel it. Red was flashing before him and he tried to breathe. 

They sat in one of those long moments after she’d finished a story. She was watching the crows outside, circling the clouded skies. 

“Do you think the others remember me?” she asked.

“Crows are ill-suited for friendship, Inej.”

She looked at him, through him. _Where are you?_ “You told me that once.” 

“You didn’t listen.”

“No.” A smile stretched across her lips. “What about you, Kaz?”

“What about me?”

“Do you recognize me?” 

Something in her tone made his throat burn. He was fighting to keep his hands from pulling into fists. Her voice had gone hoarse and quiet from all the stories. _Eighteen months without this._ Something was about to break; she was slipping off her rope. He would catch her if he could. If she fell, he would be waiting on the ground with raised hands, dirty as they were, to catch her. Touch her. He could bring her back—they could both go back, and he could ask her to stay. Beg her not to leave again. 

But he was still all crooked edges and she was now the tide, already drifting away. A long time ago she had told him that he could not touch her like this. He had agreed. 

“I recognize you,” he said. It was a start. Then again, he’d buried himself at the start. He could not touch her. Kaz looked again at the dark moons on her skin, the new scars on her hands. They were both older now, both with names too heavy to carry. He wanted to ask her where she’d gone, why it had taken her eighteen months to come back. He wanted to ask her what she had left there and what she had given away. 

He should know better. He could not say the words for the same reason he could not touch her.

Inej could steal words from his head quieter than a pistol from a thug. So she said, “I recognize you, too,” and she meant, _I know you can’t._


	2. Chapter 2

The next day, they had to bury the bodies. 

When slaves died and slavers were killed on the _Wraith_ , Inej ordered their bodies to be thrown overboard. The decision rarely sparked resistance from anyone aboard the ship, since it meant that the hold would be lightened and the stench would finally be cleaned out. There would be less mouths to feed and more rations to empty. Still, there were always a few slaves whose loved ones succumbed to their injuries from whatever unspeakable things happened to them on the slave ships. Some would sit in the cargo hold, holding the cold and lifeless body of their brother or sister or mother or father close to their chests when Inej climbed down to collect. They would beg her to wait, to let them stay for a few more days so they can bury them in the earth, away from the slavers’ bodies piled on the sea floor. All despite knowing that she was the captain, that she could easily dismiss their pleas. 

But Inej had died in a cargo hold of a slavers ship as well, and without arms to hold her or desperate orders to see her carried safely to land. She would not deny them now.

The afternoon sun was making the stench worse. Inej, her quartermaster, and two members of her crew stood by the freshly covered graves with shovels in their hands. The bodies lay several feet below with mounds of earth covering them, but the smell still lingered, choking her. Inej dug the blade of her shovel into the ground and gripped it with white knuckles—she would not lose her senses in front of these people. 

There were six graves in total, one mourner watching over each. The one across from her was a young boy burying his sister. Inej remembered him well—when she rescued his group, he had mistaken her for a pirate eager to steal the ship for money and throw all passengers overboard. He had asked her to spare his injured sister but when Inej asked the _Wraith’s_ medik to inspect the girl, she had seen no visible wounds. Inej found him hugging her cold body in his arms the next day, pacing the deck and muttering something over and over about her hitting her head.

 _The sea will take care of her_ , she wanted to say then. But you cannot avoid the eyes of a person who has just lost the last of their family. You cannot ignore the hoarse, steady voice that begs you to listen. Not when that voice once belonged to you. 

“I need a drink,” the quartermaster muttered. She dropped her shovel and stalked away, the two crew members following close behind. Inej chose different men and women from her crew each time they had to bury bodies; the toll would be too great otherwise. The mourners soon went after them, probably to a bar or their embassy or the _Wraith_ itself—whichever felt closest to home now. 

Inej dropped to her knees before the row of graves, wiping her dirt covered hands on her coat and holding them out, palms facing the clear Ketterdam sky. She closed her eyes but found no peace behind them—part of her was aching with exhaustion, and part of her was hearing the words _No mourners no funerals_ so loud in her head that she could not think. Still, she took a steep breath and spoke to the Saints.

“What are you doing?” a voice snarled. 

She looked up and saw the young boy standing across from her, near his sister’s grave. He looked about fifteen years old, and yet he was taller than Inej by a foot, glaring down at her as she knelt. His eyes were clouded with something between revulsion and quiet rage, like dark waters gathering in the face of a storm. 

Inej did not lower her hands. “I am praying.”

“Has it ever helped?”

She did not answer. He asked again, spitting the words out, now sharpened with desperation. “Has it ever helped?”

“It will,” she said. There was nothing more she could offer him. 

-

“Hey, Kaz, care for a game of cards?”

“Fuck off.”

“Ouch.” Jesper grinned and spun in his seat to face him. “I was expecting that _after_ you lost.”

Kaz was already limping across the Crow Club to the front doors but at the last second, he swiped an empty glass from a table nearby and hurled it at Jesper’s head. If Inej had more time, she would have ducked away from her seat next to him, but the glass stopped inches from Jesper’s face and hovered above his now-outstretched hand. 

Kaz brushed invisible dust off his gloves. “The day I play cards against a Fabrikator will be the day Ghezen steps off the Barter and personally asks me for his _kruge_ back. Until then—” he tapped the brim of his hat “—I will take my gamble elsewhere.”

“That’s a filthy lie, Brekker. Ghezen would skip the chivalry and flatten you with his fist.”

“Who would flatten a cripple?” He asked over his shoulder and gave his cane an exaggerated tap. “Besides, there is money to be made off rich men’s pity.” 

The doors shut behind him, leaving Jesper, Inej, and Wylan sitting alone in the closed gambling house. Wylan reached across their table and set the floating glass down. “When I suggested asking one of the Dregs for a game, I didn’t mean go straight for the _leader_.”

Jesper shrugged and set his deck of cards down next to the glass. “I didn’t get a game but I got the spectacle of that graceful exit. Not a huge loss.”

Inej stared at both of them. She was trying to cloud her weariness by drinking in their smiles and glinting eyes. It had been several hours since the burial, and Inej had just gotten back from meeting with the rest of her crew to arrange for supplies to be moved onto the _Wraith_. They needed to reload on weapons too, but the merchant trading with Inej’s ship would not return to the city for another fortnight. It was an irritating setback, but Inej did not grant trust to just any trader in Ketterdam, so she begrudgingly agreed. The _Wraith_ would have to stay in the city harbor for a bit longer than expected. 

Jesper’s eyes caught on hers and his smile softened at her expression. “Watch,” he said, pointing to the deck of cards splayed out in front of them. He slid a queen of diamonds closer to her and rested his hand over the card. Inej watched for a jerk of a finger, a silent breath being exhaled, but he was still as stone. Seconds later, Jesper lifted his hand and the card was gone. 

“It’s foolproof,” Wylan whispered to her, as if the floor wasn’t entirely empty. “I made him do it in front of me dozens of times. Not even a twitch.”

Inej watched as Jesper somehow slid the queen of diamonds out of his coat—not the sleeve, but the inside of his breast pocket. He flicked it onto the table and folded his arms behind his head. “That right there, Inej, is the key to endless waffles and coffee from the Dregs, a magician character named after me in the Komedie Brute if I do so graciously accept their offer, and the reckoning of Kaz Brekker himself.”

Inej shook her head in awe. “You have no tell. No wonder he bolted.”

“Even Wylan thought it was a terrible idea, until I mentioned the waffles.”

“I still think it’s a terrible idea,” Wylan pointed out. “Kaz will bury you two himself if he hears you talking like that. I will sit this one out.”

Jesper yanked gently at his curls. “No, you won’t. You’d follow me to the ends of the earth if you could, merchling.”

Inej found her cheeks aching from a smile she didn’t know she was wearing. It was incredible how they managed to dissolve the black dread in her heart without her even noticing. The fifteen-year old boy and his sister’s grave was a distant memory, the dirt under her nails belonging to a stranger’s hand. Inej let her eyelids drop and leaned back, just for a few seconds, just to soak up the last of her friends’ laughter. 

She caught herself at the last moment. She had not slept the night before—and she felt no guilt for lying to them about the Geldrenner. Inej simply would not allow herself to slip when she was that close to Jesper, or Wylan, or Kaz. It was only because she now trusted herself less than she trusted them. She could not imagine what would happen if she woke up from her sleep delirious and breathless, as she had done so many nights on the _Wraith_. Inej would only be in Ketterdam for a little while longer, she would not spend it frightening the ones she held most dear.

Instead, last night she had climbed the roofs of the Barrel, letting the sound of her feet hitting the stone keep her awake. She had doubled back to where the _Wraith_ was docked in the harbor, she had slipped past the West Stave and its abandoned pleasure houses. Her restlessness was useless—she could not outrun sleep, nor could she outrun the dead men that came to life in it. Every body she dropped into the sea returned to her when she found herself getting quiet, when she lowered her guard. The dead sung her to sleep and burned their voices into her head, so that she would still remember them when she woke. It was only the sound of ex-slaves crying of relief, the sound of them stumbling off her ship as free people again, that kept her awake long enough to outrun the songs that followed her across the sea. All the way back to Ketterdam. 

“Inej?” Jesper said softly, staring at her hands. They were shaking again. She pulled them into fists and stood. His gray eyes followed her, wide and careful, with only a hint of the humor that was there minutes ago. She dug her nails into her palm—a quiet punishment for taking so much of the lightness out of him in so little time. 

“I’m going to visit the Barter,” she told two sets of concerned eyes. A slight smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. “But I will find you again tomorrow.” 

-

Inej did not stop once she reached the Church of Barter—she wanted to go higher. 

She followed the same steps she had taken last time, finding the hidden footholds and balancing her weight against the spires with ease. When she reached the base of Ghezen’s right hand, the moon hung brightly above her head. She climbed onto the cusp of the statue’s fingers and pulled a knee up to her chest. The streets below her were coming alive for another long night of crime and thieving and gambling, and she was watching from the best seat in the city. 

It was up on the highest point Inej could climb that she held her hands out again, and prayed. And prayed and prayed and prayed. She prayed for the six bodies she buried that day, she prayed for the six mourners that had accompanied them, she prayed for the restless and weary faces of the men and women on her crew—sailors who held the love of the sea bright in their eyes and quietly despaired when they were separated from it for too long. She had felt it too; she missed the tug of the waves and the saltwater clinging to her braid. She missed climbing her ropes and watching the water unfold in front of her like it flowed from a god. 

She knew there was a cruelty in the work that she did—she even welcomed the angry rush in her blood when she sank slavers ship after slavers ship. But the Saints did not seem to think the same, and they reminded her so every day. Inej had become hardened from it; she could feel it in the way she prayed now. _Has it ever helped?_ Her words were angry, sharp, challenging. They fell out of her mouth and into her hands like glass. They cut into her skin and reminded her who she was. That was enough.

 _Better me than anyone else._ Because she was Inej Ghafa, she was the Wraith, and most importantly, she was a ghost. She haunted the dreams of men who bought other men as property and sent them over the sea. She could not be haunted in return. It was in the very nature of what she had become. 

She did not know how long she sat in Ghezen’s hand. Maybe hours, or minutes. She jolted herself awake when another wave of exhaustion threatened to knock her over the stone. Inej climbed down and slipped over the main apse. She was heading down the nave of the church when she noticed a head bent down in one of the aisles close to the transept. 

_Saints._ It was a church—what else did she expect? She hoped whoever it was would not notice her so disrespectfully climbing down the god’s holy statue. But when the head looked up, Inej recognized the dark hair trimmed short on the sides, the gloved hands resting on his cane before him where he sat in the aisle, close to the nave. Bitter coffee eyes met hers and she stopped. 

A laugh erupted from her chest, the sound echoing magnificently off the empty church walls. “One half-hearted threat from a gambler, and it’s made you a religious man?”

“It’s not the god I’m here to see,” Kaz said simply. He leaned back, and even from a distance she could see the weary pull of his movements. They now shared a disdain for sleep, but it still bothered her to see him like this, with his hunched shoulders and heavy eyelids. 

Inej crossed the nave and went into the aisle behind him. She sat just off to his side so he could see her from the corner of his eyes, or face her if he wished to turn his head. “You should sleep,” she told his cane over his shoulder. 

His eyes settled on the altar in front of them. “I don't think I asked for your wise guidance.” 

“I’m giving it anyway. You need to sleep.”

“You need to sleep,” Kaz repeated, a distant edge in his voice. Inej recognized it too quickly. It was the voice he used when he slipped into Dirtyhands on missions gone astray—it cut into his prey like a knife with no handle. She remembered how he looked when he slipped into it, becoming less a boy and more a crow with each passing breath.

Inej leaned over and saw a gloved hand pressing down on his bad leg.

“It’s not bad today,” he said when he caught her staring, then shook his head. “Of all the places you could have chosen to pray.”

“This is the holiest place in the city.”

“Wrong god. Not so holy city.”

“The Saints hear prayers from every corner of the world.”

“Oh, I have no doubt you’ve made sure of that.” He finally turned to look at her. The bitterness in his eyes would have swallowed his face whole, if not for the crooked smile he was giving her. “I don’t recall mistaking Ghezen for Geldrenner when you said where you’d be staying.”

Inej steeled herself for a reply. She had expected this; she knew he would figure out that she had not checked into the Geldrenner last night or tonight. She knew he would confront her sooner rather than later, and she knew how he would do it. So she replied with an equally dangerous calm, “You didn’t.” 

“I didn’t.” His eyes flickered. “So the crow flew over the sea and still returned a crow.”

“Maybe you’re losing your edge.”

“I seem to have lost my edge around you a long time ago, Wraith.”

They sat unwavering in the sharp silence that followed. The church walls were too high and they beard down on her. Everywhere she turned, there was Ketterdam demanding her to speak. 

She watched him back. “It is being handled. That is the truth.”

It was enough for now, because Kaz finally tore his eyes away and let his head drop. “You need to sleep,” he said again. The silence had lulled the edge out of his voice. He just sounded tired. 

It was then that Inej truly realized that there had been three years of his life that she hadn’t been here for. Three years where she did not stand behind him in his shadow. How could she have forgotten? He was not a child anymore. Ketterdam had beaten it out of him years ago, just as the sea had beaten the child out of her. Inej had the sudden urge to reach out and tangle her fingers though his hair, to comfort him. It was an old urge, so used to being quietened that it had fallen still. A girl’s urge. She would give anything to be younger again, to see the boy he was before the city stole that part of him away. 

Inej only smiled softly. “I’ll sleep in Ghezen’s hand. It has nicer views than the Slat.”

He considered this, and said, “If you sleep up there, you could fall.”

“I never fall.”

“No. And you never will.” _But you could,_ is what he meant to say. He stood, trying out his bad leg. “Come back with me anyway.”

He stepped out of the aisle and left without a glance in her direction. She didn’t watch him leave; the echo of his tapping cane was enough. She could wait until the sound vanished, until he realized that she would not follow him now or ever again. Was that the twisted kind of comfort she had to offer him?

Inej knew better. There was no comfort to be given to Kaz Brekker, Dirtyhands, the Bastard of the Barrel, not in any form, not anymore. It was foreign to him like caution was foreign to a half-cocked gun. But he was right—she was still just as much crow as he was. There was no comfort among creatures like them, only the unspoken promise to guard each other no matter how bloody they became. No matter how many years had changed them. As deadly as they may be, crows did not pick out crows’ eyes. 

He did not give any sign that he noticed when she slipped into the moonlit shadows trailing him. But Inej was not fooled. Kaz Brekker would hear the silence and know his Wraith was close behind.


	3. Chapter 3

“Do you want the fastest route or the one with less climbing?”

Kaz narrowed his eyes. “The one that’s both.”

“Then choose another gambling house to sabotage,” Inej advised, one foot already out of his office window. “Or contemplate on a more modest approach.”

“There is no _modest_ way to blow up an entire building."

“Say a prayer before you light the match?”

“I’ll let the Black Tips do the praying.” Kaz tugged on his gloves and reached for the doorknob. When her shadow shifted and disappeared out the window, he stopped and turned. “This is the first floor, Inej. We can take the door.”

“Not on the fastest route,” she called out, poking her head back in the room. He didn’t mean to, but he found himself staring at the moonlight hitting her braid, at the way her nimble fingers gripped the windowsill, at her copper eyes meeting his from across the room. 

Inej saw the look on his face and smiled. “Meet me on the roof, Dirtyhands. Before the sun comes up.” And then she was gone.

They had almost fallen back into the old routine, the one they had for those few months after she first left the Dregs. Except now she managed her crew and stayed with the ex-slaves during the day, and met him at the Slat when the sun finally sank. That was when they both avoided sleep together—he would take her on errands around the city that could only be done in the dark, he would sit by his desk and her by his windowsill and he would tell her of the new schemes swimming in his head that night. When sleep finally forced his eyes closed in the early hours of the morning, Inej would quietly step down from his windowsill and leave him to rest. He did not ask why. He could almost imagine it all happening back then, when she had first come back from training, if not for the new heaviness in her eyes. If not for the new half-moon scars he saw on her palms. 

If not for the fact that it had been three years, not a few months, since they were partners, and he was not prepared for this. Kaz Brekker always plotted and adapted and readied himself, always braced for the possibility of anything hitting him when he was exposed. It was what made his armor foolproof. It made his armor his greatest act, his most prized stunt that he played again and again and never drew a distrustful eye. And yet it was not enough against Inej.

The infuriating truth was that it was entirely his fault. The first mistake he made was standing by her in the harbor, straightening his tie before shaking her father’s hand, watching her tip her head back and laugh like a song. That was when he heard it—a crack somewhere beneath his untouchable flesh. The first mistake he made was hearing it, and standing by. 

The Bastard of the Barrel, the deadliest thing to rise from its waters, cruel and dirty-handed and indestructible. And when his armor began to crack, he stood by to watch it break. 

When she left, he would feel the crack from time to time and he would not think of her. He would not think of her. He would not think of her. _Why would you, when she told you she would not wait?_

No one could fool Kaz Brekker, not even himself. So he felt the place where he had been broken and he thought of Inej, and he did nothing to stop it. He was almost relieved when it happened.

-

She told him she was teaching the slaves from her rescue missions how to read Kerch. So they could avoid signing contracts with pleasure houses and traffickers who manipulated foreigners into indentures written in a language they didn’t understand. 

“Not the entire language, of course,” she said off-handedly. “Just particular words.”

He didn’t answer but the look on his face was questioning, so she answered, “Binding. Indefinite. Beatings. Animal. Unretractable.” She traced a finger down her arm. “Tattoo.”

They had stopped to stand on the rooftop of where the Menagerie used to be. The building had been emptied, abandoned, its hostess vanishing off to another filthy corner of the city. The darkness was not enough to envelope the silhouettes of the cage bars so they hung around them like a spider.

“We could find her,” he said through a clenched jaw. “You could finish her before she even opened her mouth.”

She knelt on the concrete. “I know. But she’s already finished, and there are more like her still working.” Her eyes gleamed when she looked up. “They are the ones I want to watch bleed.” 

He did not have to say that he would watch alongside her, just like she did not have to say she already knew.

-

Several nights later, the power went out in Ketterdam. The power went out, and Kaz watched the girl who was a shadow come alive with a ferocious delight. Darkness doused the Barrel’s crooked buildings and she slipped between them like parting waves. He followed her through dingy alleyways and stood with her on rooftops overlooking the blackened city, stretched bare and hidden at the same time. It hummed like a becalmed animal, biding its time in the dark and lying in wait for the right moment to leap back to life. Inej grinned at him through the shadows. This is how you hunt, she told him. This is how you sail on a night-drenched sea and swallow ships whole.

-

One week passed, and Inej still stayed after finding a shelter for the slaves aboard her ship who wanted to stay in Ketterdam; the ones without any family waiting for them anywhere else. Kaz and she had stumbled across it in the Warehouse District on the way to pay their respects to six floor-to-ceiling paintings temporarily in storage, each worth two million _kruge_. It was an abandoned factory building, covered in cobwebs and dust. 

“That’s not the exactly the face of someone who’s just found a home for over a dozen ex-slaves,” he noted when he saw the way Inej ran her hands across the peeling walls.

“My men and women will make sure they have the security they need. We’ll stay until they’re settled,” she replied idly. 

Kaz waited for more, but followed her wordlessly outside when she said nothing. They went back to the Slat—Kaz to examine the authenticity and worth of the newly acquired paintings, and Inej to sit on his windowsill and watch him talk with Jesper about selling them. By the time they had finished and Jesper left yawning, it was almost dusk, and Kaz’s eyes were falling shut despite his best efforts to stay awake. 

“Do you know the best way to approach a slavers ship?” Inej’s voice cut through the haziness in his head as he sat down at his desk. “You sit and wait just beyond its line of sight. The hull of your ship sits underneath the horizon line where its hidden, but the main masts sit above the horizon line. You pull up your sails and sit in the crow's nest so you can wait and watch for when the other ship anchors to rest. They can’t see your masts from that distance—they're too thin. So you see them but they can’t see you. Then you move in.” 

He looked up and met her eyes. They were far away again. He vaguely remembered all the times she would watch him when he was lost in thought, and smile and say _Scheming face_. 

“There is no other feeling like it,” she said quietly. “To be on the sea and to not be there at the same time. I was all around them. I was everywhere at once, and they didn’t see me coming.” 

“No one ever sees you coming. That’s why you’re the Wraith.”

She blinked and saw him now. Her expression was dark laughter, it was a hint of fear. “No, Kaz, I am more than that now. The sea has taken me and made me a god.” 

There was something else lingering below her expression that he understood—a kind of quiet violence. That was what calmed the loud beating in his chest now, that made the crack underneath his flesh burn with recognition. 

_What happened to you, Inej?_

It wasn’t his own good sense that stopped Kaz from asking. It was the realization that she had sat on his windowsill, looked him right in the eyes, and confessed. 

-

Inej caught him staring again and laughed. “I can braid yours too, if you’d like.”

“It’s not long enough.” Kaz looked away and quickly combed his fingers through his hair. 

“It is, now. Right there. It even curls a bit.” 

“I need to cut it again.” 

Inej feigned a sorrowful look in protest. “I kind of like it like this. It makes you look innocent.”

“It’s detrimental in a fight. I can’t deflect a blow when I’m too busy sweeping the hair off my face.”

She laughed again. “Don’t be so dramatic, Kaz. That’s why I’m offering to braid it.” 

Kaz looked down to the ground. They were sitting on a rooftop ledge, side by side, after scouting the possible hideouts of a new gang that had appeared in the Barrel. So far, the tips he had received were vague at best and it had been a slow night.

He saw her fingers from the corner of his eye, hovering above a strand of hair that had fallen onto his forehead. He met her eyes.

Can I? 

He nodded—quickly, before reason could tell him otherwise. Seconds later, warm fingers brushed his skin as they combed his hair back. Kaz did his best; he closed his eyes, he held his breath, he turned his hands to stone, he pressed his lips into a white line. He could almost hear water lapping on street below them, threatening to rise. _Inej, Inej, Inej._

Inej didn’t linger. He watched her hand drop to grip the roof ledge before letting his breathing resume. 

A while later, she asked him, “Do you see him every time?”

“Yes,” he admitted. “But not today.”

-

Her second week in Ketterdam was coming to an end. The weapons merchant had met up with Inej and her quartermaster at the harbor by her ship earlier that day, supervising the transport of pistols and swords to the _Wraith’s_ hold. A part of her had wanted this to be over quick so she could leap onto her deck and sail away, outrun the songs again. And yet another foolish part of her was humming with excitement when she saw the sun start to drop, inching closer to the moment when she could slip through the Barrel again and find her way to Kaz’s office.

When the moment arrived, she bade her quartermaster farewell for the night, and hurried back to the Slat. 

“How was the trade-off?” Kaz asked from his desk when her moonlit shadow shifted onto his windowsill.

“It went smoothly, thank the Saints. We should be ready to sail in two days.”

“Two days,” he echoed.

A smile tugged at her lips. “Miss me already, Dirtyhands?” 

“Shadows aren’t cheap to come by these days.”

“You fared well enough when I was gone before.”

“I’m flattered that you think so, Wraith.”

She raised an eyebrow at him. “Am I wrong? Has our Kaz Brekker been struggling to find another spider?”

“I don’t need another spider,” Kaz replied flatly.

“When you do eventually climb over your pride and need one, find one that can weather your moods.” 

“Like I said, I don’t need another spider,” he snapped. When he saw the pointed look on her face, he shook his head and suddenly seemed very interested in skimming the papers in his hands.

Inej almost laughed, but hushed herself at the last second. She was equally as anxious as he sounded about leaving soon, but the moment was too dear to ruin with thoughts of when she would return. 

The night was going too quickly. She lounged by the windowsill while Kaz paced the room, going over a plan to infiltrate the new rapidly growing East Stave gang and stage a Dregs member as an inside man. 

“To find out where these new players are standing?” Inej teased him. 

Kaz blinked out of his scheming face. “You don’t become the Barrel boss by thinking everyone in Ketterdam walks around with a good heart.”

“A thief thinks everyone steals,” she grinned.

“Precisely.” 

Inej leaned her head back to rest against the sill. The sound of Kaz’s cane matched her beating heart, and she found herself being soothed by its presence. She couldn’t tell how much time was passing, but the sound was beginning to lull her eyes shut.

The sill beneath her fell away.

Her head snapped up—she was on the _Wraith._ It sloshed on the water, hushed and almost still. There was no land around them as far as she could see, but—

When she looked down, she saw ropes tangling around her arms and legs where she lay in the crow’s nest. Her heart dropped. From this height, the sea around her looked calm, still. The face of becalmed waters right after a storm. _Where was the sloshing sound coming from?_

A moan from somewhere over the ship’s deck, coming from the water near its hull. Inej strained her neck. There, and there, and there. All around her ship, floating on the sea’s reddened surface. Men and women in her crew, the slaves she had rescued. Bodies dotted the black waters surrounding the hull like rotting fish. 

A sound may have escaped her throat, but her ears had deafened from the booming drums in her chest. Inej yanked at her arms. The ropes had been tangled into the nest so that she was on her stomach, her hands fastened behind her back. _They are still alive._

Her knives. She fiddled with her wrists until Sankta Petyr came lose, and she gripped it tightly to hack at the ropes, and _They are still alive, they are still alive, they are still_ —

_Inej!_

Her world shifted. Glaring sunlight turned to blinding darkness, ropes dissolved into thin air. She stumbled onto wood and heaved. A cold hand wrapped around the back of her neck. 

“Inej—” 

The hand was gone in an instant and footsteps staggered away. It was so cold, his skin. How can someone who wears gloves like a second flesh have such cold skin?

Inej looked down at her fingers splayed against the wooden floorboards. The engravings of Sankta Petyr’s handle dug into her flesh. There was blood on her hands. 

Inej lurched to her feet, the knife laying abandoned on the floor. Kaz was leaning against his desk, white knuckled hands gripping the polished wood, widened black eyes piercing hers. A short shallow gash ran across his cheekbone and sent a drop of blood down his face like a darkened tear. 

She had cut him.

They watched each other for several long minutes, startled and shocked and still. She had cut him, and he had still gotten closer. He had still used his hands to bring her back. 

_You foolish idiot_ , she thought to herself in horror. _Look what you’ve done._

Kaz let go of his grip on the table, and for one dragged out, horrible second, Inej thought he would slip. His dark eyes found her bloodied hands. A shadow passed over them, but she could not tell what he was seeing. 

The second passed. He breathed out and stepped towards her. 

“Are you alright?” he asked through gritted teeth. 

Saints. Inej wanted to kick him. Or kick herself. “I just left a gash on your face. Are _you_ alright?”

He swallowed, hesitated. “No.”

“No,” she answered back. Then, quieter, “Forgive me.”

Kaz winced and shook his head. “Let’s not start with that, Wraith. You know I don’t care.”

“Let me clean it, then.”

“Where did you go?”

Inej ignored the question. “It was my knife, Kaz. I’ll wear your gloves.”

“Where did you go?” he asked again. 

She pointed to a nearby wooden crate. “Let me clean it. You’ll bleed all over your shirt.”

They watched each other stubbornly for a disgracefully long amount of time before Kaz nodded and crossed the room to the designated crate. 

“Leave them,” he said hoarsely as she headed for his table. “The gloves. Leave them.”

-

He hardly felt the sting. How could he, when the light brushes of her fingers against his skin were setting him on fire? The gash was nothing, it was barely an afterthought now. Kaz dug his nails into his palms, fighting to keep them still. He was doing his best. 

When Inej was finished, she studied the bandage for a long time. So long that he could see the moonlit shadows in his office slowly shift. Her face was still inches from his, her worried dark eyes trained on his cheek. If he was someone else, if he was a boy who hadn’t died in Ketterdam’s harbors and rose again from a pile of rotting corpses, if he could manage to close the distance between them and kiss her right now, right now, without so much as a shudder, then he would. He would hold her like his life depended on it. 

It was a giant, scathing _if_. But there was a break in his armor, so maybe he wasn’t entirely hopeless. He leaned down slowly, carefully, each second deliberately planned so that one twitch from her would make him pull away. But Inej was still looking at his cheek, and he wanted to give her _something_ , after what he had seen her do. Not comfort, not any words of love, because those were not things that two of the deadliest people in this city could give to each other yet. They were both still breaking—but when she had stood before him with his blood on her hands and a fierce protectiveness in her eyes, he had felt the same. 

She had given him a flicker of something violent but warm, vulnerable but steady. He wanted to call it hope. So he rested his forehead against hers, felt the skin burn where they touched, and stayed still. 

Kaz’s armor was a foul thing, made of leather and blood and the name _Brekker_ and a mountain of lies. And he had not mended it when it first cracked. There was now a fine line in his skin where the stench of rotting bodies did not reach, where the reddened waters did not stain him. Curse her Saints. It was only going to crack wider—he was being so _stupid_. Stupidity would kill him. It would strip him of any dignity he had left, it would knock him off the throne he had built himself brick by brick, body after sodden body. 

He hadn’t noticed his hands unravel from their stiff fists. Inej’s eyes flicked to where they rested in his lap. She asked, “Has it gotten easier?”

The fine line was burning into his skin. _I could show it to her. I could let her walk across it instead of pulling away._ He carefully leaned down and his nose brushed hers. His breath caught for a second, but it did not tremble. 

Kaz Brekker was uncatchable. He had picked a thousand locks and sworn twice as many lies to save his skin. He was the master of broken promises and vanishing acts. But here with Inej, under the cloak of night, he was not Kaz Brekker. He was just Kaz. There were no lies he could come up with that she could not see, no cover he could fall under where she would not follow.

So he gave her the truth. He gave her a promise. He gave her, “It will.”

Inej closed her eyes and smiled, satisfied, as if that was the answer she expected. Kaz almost laughed. He had forgotten how useless he was at predicting her steps. She had already seen the fine line—she was probably halfway over by now.


	4. Chapter 4

The next day, Inej found a parting gift for Kaz. 

She had seen the gift scaling the walls of the shelter in the Warehouse District with a bent dagger clamped in his teeth, its metal glinting in the afternoon sun. She followed him to the rooftop. He stood in a corner, feet planted firmly on the ledge in a stance that meant business, overlooking the District street. 

It was the fifteen-year old boy—A Ravkan child from Keramzin, she had learned. When Inej’s crew had made arrangements for the rescued ex-slaves to return to their homes across the sea or the farmlands on the Kerch countryside, the Ravkan boy had stayed behind and joined the handful of men and women who wanted to make Ketterdam their new home.

Inej’s feet were silent as she approached him. “What are you doing?”

“Guarding.” He did not turn around.

“My crew is guarding the shelter.”

“So am I.” 

Inej could see easily enough that he was a fighter. An unseasoned fighter—one that had to learn on his own in the hold of a slaver’s ship, to protect his sister if not himself, but a fighter nonetheless. 

“Are you planning on doing anything with that?” she nodded to the dagger.

“Maybe. You killed my sister’s murderers. Those deaths were meant to be mine and you took them from me.”

“You are a child, not a killer.”

“I will learn. Isn’t that what you did, Inej Ghafa? You were just like me, and you learned.”

 _I learned to survive_. But it was clear what the Ravkan boy saw when he looked at her now—a pirate, a practiced killer, and nothing more. It did not matter how much she tried to make them see that she was not the monster they saw in her; they would still refuse to meet her eyes with anything but fear, or a look that meant they wanted nothing to do with her. 

Inej eyed the faulty dagger in his hands. He was inexperienced, but he did show promise. She remembered kneeling by those graves on the day of the burials when the boy had nearly snuck up on her and startled her out of prayer. Nearly.

“That piece of metal won’t do you any good. Find a proper knife and a sheath to put it in.” She paused at his bulky, torn boots. “And practice your footwork.”

Inej stepped towards him when he did not move. “Do you want to kill the kind of men I kill?”

He nodded.

“Then learn not to take yourself down with them.” She motioned to the roof ledge. “Get down and climb up again. Without your shoes.”

He did. Again, she said when his next climb was quieter. Again, she said. And again, and again, until he was almost soundless.

-

Kaz was fine with getting caught in a lie as long as he was caught by himself. Because really, his first mistake with Inej did not happen three years ago when he stood in the harbor beside his Wraith and her new ship. Kaz’s first mistake happened long before that—he was a child then, but still very much the limping Dirtyhands who would commit any foul crime for a stack of _kruge_. 

He always knew he was molten underneath, unforgiving and ebbing and humming for a chance to spill over and burn someone. It was a mistake to stand by and watch the thing that was Kaz Brekker threaten to split open, but the bigger mistake still was allowing the black fire in his blood to be fed. The very, very first mistake was allowing a flame to spark.

It happened when he handed a knife to a wide eyed Suli ex-working girl a month after she joined the Dregs.

“You will need a knife,” he told her. “If not tomorrow, then next week, or next month. We will kill when someone is in the way of what we want, so you will learn to do the same. So that when a knife is thrown at you, you can either catch it by the blade or by the handle. The decision is yours.” He shot a dark look over his shoulder before leaving her room. “Choose quickly, before your Saints get the better of you.”

Kaz remembered thinking how much he reveled in seizing the last word. As he left the Suli girl’s room, he felt a sharp breeze by his side. A soft _hum_ of something speeding past his temple. Kaz stopped. The knife he had handed to her a minute ago was lodged into the doorframe beside him. He stared blankly at the handle.

Her quiet voice filled the room, less unsteady than it was before. “Do not worry about how my Saints tell me to catch it, Kaz Brekker. Worry about where to stand when I decide to throw it back.” 

When he eventually resumed his limp and left her room, he remembered thinking: Twice in one month. He could not remember the last time he had been startled by someone at all, and she had done it twice in _one_ month. It stunned him. It enraged him. It flickered into a keenness he could not douse; one that would last for years. You don’t just follow a monster into its den, let alone throw a knife at its head. He remembered thinking: for all he knew, she had prayed her Saints would make him realize that she could be a monster, too. For all he knew, they had listened. 

-

Inej spent her last evening in the city at the Van Eck mansion, lounging around while Jesper read the daily report of the Van Eck business to Wylan. They sat on a couch with Wylan’s head in Jesper’s lap, his fingers combing through the coppery nest of curls. Inej observed with a shy curiosity the way he touched Wylan, as if he was brushing a hand over a pistol; to ground himself, to put himself at ease. The reminder that something gentle and kind like this could exist lightened a weight in Inej’s heart. Saints knew she hadn’t seen enough of it in the last three years. 

Kaz joined them later in classically-Kaz fashion by not bothering to announce his break in. Jesper scowled when he soundlessly entered the room. “It can’t hurt your pride that much to just knock. This is Wylan’s—Saints, Kaz. What happened to your face?”

“Not important,” Kaz replied. “I need ammo. Two crates’ worth for long-range rifles. Can you get it done by tomorrow night?”

And that was that. The three Dregs slipped into an intense conversation about how to negotiate a weapons deal, which took an impressive ten minutes to turn into a heated argument between Jesper and Kaz. Inej decided it was best to tune out entirely and let them talk it out. Which they did, eventually, and by some Saints’ miracle they hadn’t resorted to throwing punches.

“Where will you go?” Wylan asked her later. At that point, Kaz had migrated to a corner where he leaned against the wall while a seething Jesper mirrored his pose in the opposite corner, as far apart from him as he could get. Both boys looked up when Wylan addressed Inej. “Os Kervo? There’s been talk in the Merchant Council of slavers there planning to adapt to the blows you’ve been dealing them.”

She smiled. “They’ve been adapting for months, actually. It hasn’t slowed me down at all.”

“Still.” He smiled back sheepishly. “I’ve…er, _acquired_ some possible charted courses with Jes’s help, if you want to take them with you. And there’s some demo stuff I’ve been wanting to test out—you can take that, too.” Blue eyes sparkled at her with eagerness. 

Jesper cackled, quickly recovering from his sulk. “Say yes quick, Inej. He’s got his puppy eyes out.”

Inej told him yes, she would be grateful. The boy grinned and left with Jesper to retrieve the maps.

“Os Kervo, then?” Kaz asked coolly from his corner.

Os Kervo. Returning to that coast meant returning to the days on the _Wraith_ when slaver ships were as common as a strong gust of wind in her sails. Wylan was right; the trade business had adapted to her hunting patterns. It was why she had created her there-but-not-there strategy. Whenever her sails were spotted she knew she could expect to find a cargo hold of especially bloodied slaves—and that was only if they hadn’t already been slaughtered by the crew, who abandoned ship after ridding Inej of any chance to save the chained men and women. The skeleton crews she would leave in her wake were made by the crews themselves as often as they were made by her own hands—that’s how often her name drifted on the lips of slave traders all over Os Kervo. She had ruined the waters of that city as much as they had ruined her. 

“Yes,” Inej told him. “Os Kervo.” And then what? What else was there for her, other than the sea that drew her in with its daunting songs, that tied ropes onto her limbs and pulled her back whenever she strayed too far? 

She could not bring her demons to Nina, who she missed so much sometimes her heart ached. Nina would take one look at Inej and know exactly what was happening. She could not bear to face her dear friend like this—she only wanted to meet the Grisha girl again when she knew she could laugh and eat and sing her heart out alongside her, and not let a drop of burden fall onto her shoulders.

And then there were her parents, who she had left behind in Ravka to continue their acrobatic feats. When Inej had first refused their offer to join the family caravan again, she could not bear to confess what she was planning to do instead. She gave them half-truths—a life on a ship, working under a First Army naval captain. A different kind of killer in a different kind of crew. 

So it was the sea, then. Inej knew she would hunt slavers on it until the Saints decided to send her to the afterlife. A twisted form of righteousness now simmered in her bones, drawing her into the waters lining the shores of Ravka and Fjerda and Shu Han. She depended on the way her blood craved the calls of those ships—as if they were just _daring_ her to approach them, defile them. She always did. She always left them sinking to the sea floor under the weight of their own spilled blood. 

Inej shook those thoughts away before they could force her hands to tremble again. Across the room, Kaz was staring at her. She recognized that look in a heartbeat. 

“Os Kervo,” she said again, loudly, more for herself than for him.

After years of being his second-in-command, she had become so accustomed to his coldness—it was like a shadow that constantly hung over his face, dark and unkind. Then the shadow would shift when he looked at her and Inej started to catch glimpses of a boy underneath the crow. She used to love being at the receiving end of those glimpses because she liked uncovering stubborn secrets. And to uncover the secrets of Dirtyhands himself? She reveled in it. It was what she was known for, after all. Inej horded the flashes of vulnerability he allowed her to see, she pocketed those few seconds of complete trust, and in return she promised that she would grant him the same. 

And now? His eyes were holding her in place again with their rare warmth. The word was right there on his face and he let her see it: _Stay._

They’d always had terrible timing. Whenever she would beg him to speak, he would say nothing. Whenever he would tell her not to go, she would disappear. But she had felt the weight of his body sinking into hers the night she had hurt him, and Inej did not need to hear him speak then to know what he was trying to tell her. He was promising to turn those glimpses, those few seconds of absolute truth, into something longer and less fleeting. Something she would not have to wait to see again. Did that mean she did not have to stay stranded on the sea, then? Could she return to him, too? After all the years that had passed? 

Wylan’s voice yanked her away from Kaz’s eyes. “The maps, Inej,” he said, holding them out to her. She accepted them from his hands and turned to steal one last look from those black-coffee eyes still watching her. She bade them all farewell and then did what she did best—she slipped out of sight.

-

Kaz stared at the empty seat on the couch for too long after she left. It was another stupid mistake—he never lingered when there was no need for him to.

“Scheming face?” Wylan asked Jesper.

“Close but not quite. That’s the hopelessly-in-love-but-still-denying-it face. You know, you actually made it a lot after we first met.”

“I was making it to that waffle shop Nina used to take us to.”

“See? Hopelessly a romantic.”

Kaz was not a romantic, however, and it was not his fault they chose this moment to forget. He was across the room with his fingers curled around Jesper’s collar before either boy could react. Kaz dragged him the rest of the distance and slammed him into a wall. 

“What kind of face am I making now, Jes?” he snarled.

“Can’t really tell, but it’s as ugly as ever, if that helps,” grunted Jesper. 

Wylan was beside them in seconds. “Okay. That’s enough.” He elbowed himself between them and shoved Kaz away. Kaz let him. 

Later, when he returned the Slat, he fell into his chair and dropped his head into his hands. The silence in the room felt different now—emptier than it had been every night for the last two weeks. _So she was not here_. He shouldn’t be surprised. It was her last night in the city, she probably had to meet with her crew to go over the newly acquired routes and manage the final loadings onto her ship. There really was no logical reason for her to be here tonight. 

Except he wasn’t in the mood for logical. The look on Inej’s face when she had met his eyes was flooding his head like waves hitting a shore. It was a look that almost pulled him down into the dark waters of whatever she had been seeing in her head.

Kaz passed the next few hours of the early night by counting and recounting stacks of _kruge_. It was a last-ditch effort to calm himself down and brush that look away. But the moon was still hanging brightly in the sky when a shadow finally shifted behind him. He paused as it dropped from his windowsill and reappeared as a dark figure before his desk. For several long moments, they just watched each other. 

“Tomorrow, then,” he said stupidly.

The corner of Inej’s mouth twitched. “Yes, tomorrow, Kaz.”

Then he said, “You’ll miss the coups against the Night Hounds after sundown,” because he talked business better than anything else. 

“That’s what the ammo is for? You found out why they were bringing in so many members?”

Kaz nodded and the words stumbled out. “Indentures. They’re running a joint prostitution ring off the coast of Shu Han, near Bhez Ju. Sisters and daughters kidnapped and sent there to blackmail ex-First Army soldiers into joining and paying off their indentures through gang services. More kidnappings mean more members blackmailed into work, which means more _kruge_ going to what they think is payoff for the working women.”

Inej sat down, sending him an unreadable expression—which was a bit irritating, since she happened to have the only face he couldn’t always read. He nodded again to a stack of files on a crate in the corner of the room. “The coups mean burning indentures and looting out coffers of their _kruge_. The papers are on top, if you must look.”

Her eyes still did not shift. When she spoke, it was with calm, deliberate words. “I will ask the Saints to watch over you tomorrow night.”

His jaw tightened. “No need to waste your breath.” 

_Careful, Kaz._ He bit down until he tasted blood and tried again, the words loosening on his tongue. “You could come with us. Your shadow would guarantee a stand-down by midnight.”

Inej crossed her arms and read his face. She collected what she saw there and stored it away in the back of her mind, like she used to do in the Dregs when Kaz interrogated merchers and blabbering suspects while she stood hidden in the shadows. He remembered how she would observe their small twitches, their slight shifts, and report back to him about what she suspected they were hiding. Because they were always hiding something.

So. They were both catching each other in their acts now. A cold laugh rose from his chest but died before it left his mouth. For once, he let her take what she was searching for.

“I am done with the Dregs,” she said eventually. “Two weeks does not change that, you know this.”

He did. Two weeks was nothing compared to eighteen months—or three years on the True Sea. He knew that very well now.

Then her eyes softened. “I will come back. I promise you, Kaz. I can’t tell you when because I can’t tell you what I don’t know. But I still belong in the sea, like you belong in Ketterdam. The sea carries all my Shadows like this city carries yours. I know that I’ve buried too much of myself in it, but I will not leave it behind when I can use it to keep people free from chains. You cannot ask me to.”

Kaz thought of the all the stories he had collected about her over the last year. A pirate with one of the largest body counts in recent memory. A demon that turned the sea red and haunted the dreams of merchers and slave traders. He thought of the way Inej woke from her nightmare, stumbling off his windowsill with staggering gasps. The way she rasped _They are still alive_ over and over again. The moons under her eyes and the moons on her hands. The countless other nightmares he was not there to wake her from. Slowly, black ice thawed in his veins.

“This world will never be able to break you, Wraith,” he said, voice low. “Never. That’s why it doesn’t deserve you.”

“Maybe not." She rested her elbows on his desk. When her dark brown eyes caught onto his, they were kind. “Still, it did give me this. It gave you to me, Kaz Brekker, and me to you. I have the Saints to thank for that.”

Kaz carefully laid his gloveless hand down on his desk, palm up. Her hand hovered over it moments later, the skin around raised scars turning frosted bronze under the moonlight. “A smart person would find that more damning then reassuring.”

“What does that make us?”

“Unfortunate exceptions.”

She half-laughed, dropping her palm. “I thought I was finally going to witness Dirtyhands admit to being senseless.”

Kaz shrugged and laced their fingers together. “Not unless I’m being paid to do it.”

“How much _kruge_ would it take?”

“It’s not _kruge_ I would be asking for,” he replied. Their hands trembled, but held. 

-

Inej stayed at the Slat. 

She sat before Kaz and listened to the steady counting of his _kruge_. She waited for hours, until he slowly leaned back in his chair to go over coups plans, his head tilting to rest on the rail. She watched his words turn to murmurs and his eyelashes flutter and his breathing slow. She eyed the bandage across his cheek where bone pushed at the skin. When he slept, she drank in the face he wore when he shed the crow from his skin. 

Inej wondered if she would always be surprised by this: lips relaxing from cold smiles, harsh lines around black eyes softening whenever she managed to catch them. She sank into the quiet hours of the night and reveled in them.

Later, Kaz shifted in his seat. His breath caught and his hands reached for the chair handles to grip them. Moonlight glinted off his ice-white knuckles. He had always been a light sleeper—Inej knew this, of course. She had to know how to wake him when they went out on stakeouts and it was her turn to keep watch, or when he forced himself to get a few hours of rest before taking her on a night scouting mission. So Inej knew that he carried his nightmares of his own. She had seen his body go stiff and his breathing turn to heaving many times. She had always woken him when it did.

“Kaz.” The word was barely a whisper because that was all it took. It was short and soft, like the fraying edges of wool—so unlike the distant sharpness that her voice slipped into when she spoke his name in prayers on the _Wraith_.

His eyes opened. “Inej,” he breathed, and the grip on his chair handles relaxed. He was much better at this than she was. Then again, he had years of practice.

She stayed because he asked. Well, he asked in his own way, she supposed.

“It’s your last night. Save yourself the trouble of finding a Barrel corner to hole up in,” was his explanation. 

“I thought you were making a selfless gesture.”

“So?”

“You sound infuriating.”

But he was already turning to go, so she followed. When they reached his room, Inej shed her coat and boots but not her knives, and curled to face him when they lay down. 

“I could hurt you again.” Her voice was low; a warning.

Kaz only smirked and said, “Try not to go for the face this time.”

He fell asleep before she did, his hands resting in the space between them. When Inej woke later, startled awake by the scrape of rope against her wrists, she looked across to find his hands gripping hers in his sleep. The sight of their fingers tangled together made her want to weep, or scream, or laugh. Here were two of the deadliest people in the Barrel, holding onto each other in the middle of the night like children afraid of monsters under their bed. 

Those children had died a long time ago. They had become monsters themselves and raged wars because of it. But Inej had learned from her years on the _Wraith_ that even the sea, great and furious and wild as it was, grew calm. It ebbed and flowed under the call of the moon. It lulled into soft pushes and pulls. It became kind.

-

Kaz sat and waited on his windowsill with his back to the glaring sun. Shadows shifted and he closed his eyes, because he always liked finding her there as if he somehow dreamt her to life. When he opened his eyes seconds later, there Inej stood before him, looking down with dark eyes that would have matched his own if the sunlight wasn’t turning them to liquid bronze.

“We will haul anchor soon,” she said, her smile bright. “Come watch me sail.”

She easily had a few inches on him, since he was sitting and she was standing, and he could tell she was basking in it.

Inej laughed when he didn’t answer. “Scheming?”

“No. I see you, Wraith.” _Do you know what it’s doing to me?_

“That’s the name of the ship in your harbor.”

“I see you, Inej.”

“Then act like you see me.”

Kaz really had tried to be stubborn until the very end. Well—as close to the end as he could possibly get.

When he reached for Inej, she gracefully stepped into the space between his knees so he could bury his nose into the crook of her neck. Water drowned him, but it quickly flowed into the sea and came with the smell of salt and rosemary and oils from her hair. His arms circled around her waist and she rested her hands on his shoulders. For a few long moments, they just held each other, because this could not be rushed, this could not be hurried; not for two killers with histories of recoiling from hollow touches. 

He left the curve of her neck and looked up. He was not prepared for this—for _her_.

Then the quiet violence returned to her eyes, this time softened with careful intent. “Go on.”

Kaz leaned up, he pressed his lips to hers, and he broke.

Inej broke him the second they touched, and that second spilled into the next, and the next, and the next, until he stopped counting, until he couldn’t breathe. She broke him again when she smiled into the corner of his mouth. She broke him again when she cupped his face in her hands—carefully, to avoid touching his bandage in a way that almost drove him over an edge—and he felt warmth and steadiness and _alive_. Kaz broke and broke and broke until his armor was in pieces on the floor, but he didn’t care, he didn’t mourn; he was building a new one with her lingering eyes, her fiercely protective mouth, her unwavering skin, and it was the strongest thing he would ever touch. 

Kaz turned to stone under Inej, he melted and solidified and became something new. Not molten rock, not destructive or monstrous or unforgiving—at least not to her. Under her skin he was liquid gold; he had gilded skin; he was filthy, filthy rich. 

-

Two monsters would walk down the streets of the Barrel to Fifth Harbor later that afternoon: a gang boss with a limp and a pirate with Shadows at her heels. Once in a while, they would reach for each other through glimpses of dark eyes and brushes of gloved hands against scarred skin. They would flash quiet smiles as if they were schoolchildren. They would close the space between each other in easy stumbles, like two crooked edges joining together.


	5. Chapter 5

This was the sound of Kaz Rietveld:

A flutter of cards in his hand. The distant howling of wind through a wheat field. Sitting in the corner of a tiny room, a boy’s room, a magician’s room, a brother’s room. A brother. A damp alleyway. The slosh of rotting flesh. Three pitiful coughs, two glassy eyes, one hitched breath, then silence. A scream, then silence. A body wading through dirty red water, waist deep. Then—silence.

-

“Oh,” Inej smiled. “There is a surprise waiting for you back at the Slat.”

He narrowed his eyes. “A surprise.”

“Okay—less a surprise and more a solution to an unfilled position.”

It took him a moment. “You’re giving me a shadow?”

“I’m offering you a potential candidate, yes. This one also happens to have moods that match your own.”

Kaz shook his head incredulously, eyebrows raised. “And should I be grateful or concerned that this candidate has somehow gotten approval from the likes of _you_?”

“Both is fine.” Inej turned to him. They stood before the _Wraith_ , watching her crew going back and forth between her ship and the last of Wylan’s demo supplies on the dock. She savored the smile still lingering on Kaz’s lips and looked down to his tie. It had somehow become ruffled from when she had kissed him. Heat flushed into her cheeks.

“Your tie,” she mumbled, reaching up to fix it. When he saw the splotches of red that were undoubtedly painted across her face, he laughed.

Inej melted at the sound. She had realized long ago that his laughs came more freely when she was alone with him. It was another thing she stole in her memory like pieces of gold—a thunderclap of angry laughter in the middle of the night when a scouting mission went wrong; a curious chuckle when he caught her praying for his safe return from a raid; a half-laugh when she convinced him to go with her stealthier, quieter escape plan instead of his inevitable pistols-blazing-wild-looting approaches.

His laugh sent flickers of something warm and humming through her veins now. Inej did not pocket it this time—she would hear it again and again and again, whenever the sea carried her home. 

-

This was the sound of Kaz Brekker:

The pull of leather. The tap of a cane. Feet hitting pavement, then knees, then a _crack_. Jagged rock against rock. Crooked smiles and dirty hands. Silence, then _I can help you_. Blood in his mouth, then bronze. Chains clanging in a wagon, then an anxious gasp, then silence. Lock picks clicking open coffers of _kruge_. The whisper of knives leaving sheaths. The whisper of knives being named. The pull of leather. The tap of a cane. The pull of leather. The tap of a cane. The pull of—

-

Inej stepped around to face Kaz once she got the signal that the _Wraith_ was fully loaded and her crew was on board.

“May the Saints watch over you and the Dregs tonight,” she said. 

His eyes dropped to his gloved hands resting on the crow-headed cane. “Ask them to bring you back soon. For the other jobs you can help me with.” _And for me_.

Inej regarded his curling dark hair, his dark brown eyes that mirrored her own. She ran her eyes across his sharp jaw and the collection of hard edges that softened now. Before, she had only allowed herself to imagine how she would forget these things when she sailed on the _Wraith_. The sea that separated them was wide enough to drown hundreds of bodies and she could not help but wonder if it was best to let him drown with them. There were too many slavers to hunt and too many slaves to be found in their holds. She had become prepared to let them consume her, let them make a home in her head and sing to her across the sea for as long as she lived. She was ready for their Shadows to plague her so that she may atone for her sins.

 _I will always be ready. But now I know that I do not have to be_.

Inej held out her hand, palm up, to him. “I think we can help each other.”

-

This was the sound of Kaz: 

The brush of lips on his hands. A shadow shifting on his windowsill. Jagged rock against seawater, until it smoothed. _Do you know what you’re doing to me?_ A dark alleyway, then another one, then another one, then dozens more after that, because he would steal kisses from her like he stole card tricks from a magician, practicing them again and again and again until he went mad with hunger, until he got them just right. The tap of a cane. Thinking to himself, _my girl_. Curling locks of hair caught in a breeze because he liked that she liked it like this. A traveling song floating into Fifth Harbor after two weeks or one month or it did not even matter how long, because she would still climb down, walk across, and reach him, every time. Counting through stacks of _kruge_. The words, soft like a prayer: _I think we can help each other_. Fingers hovering inches apart, fingers laced together. _Inej, Inej, Inej_. Cracks in his skin that stopped burning, just like he promised. After a while, after months, out loud, “My girl.” To Jes and Wylan, to the papers on his desk, to a black braid coming undone in the dark, to a disappearing shadow, to her scarred hands, to the sea. 

The words: _I think we can help each other_.

And then the words: _The deal is the deal_.


End file.
